


a strange exhilaration

by ladyvivien



Category: Mapp & Lucia (2014), Mapp & Lucia - All Media Types
Genre: 1930s, F/F, Foe Yay, Frenemies, Hate Sex, Love/Hate, Masturbation, Mild S&M, Rivalry, Solo Kink, imagined dom!Mapp, sub!Lucia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-03
Updated: 2015-01-03
Packaged: 2018-03-05 04:36:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3106118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyvivien/pseuds/ladyvivien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lucia loathes Elizabeth Mapp. But there’s loathing and loathing, and this is the kind Lucia has always enjoyed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a strange exhilaration

Lucia is vain, she knows that. She’s vain, and far too clever for her own good without being clever enough to do something with it, and she bores easily. So she plays puppet master with her friends and relations, makes them dance to her tune and changes the tempo just often enough to keep them on their toes. Miss Elizabeth Mapp, on the other hand, has a cruel streak a mile wide. She can paper over it with rural pleasantries and middle class snobbery, but the woman is a cat of the highest order and she inflicts social embarrassment on people who displease her the way little boys tear the wings off flies. 

She’s never minded being all style and substance before, a glossy facade that even Georgie has never really seen past. But then a social-climbing spinster had spent a week in Riseholme and Elizabeth Mapp had breathed new life into a game that Lucia had almost forgotten she was playing. So of course Lucia followed her to Tilling and then set the pace, took the fight to her home turf to see what Mapp was made of. 

And what a delight to find less sugar than spice and nothing nice at all. Oh, she loathes Mapp, that much is certain. But there’s loathing and loathing, and this is the kind Lucia has always enjoyed. She finds herself seeking the other woman out, complicating her life more than is strictly necessary and the occasional little slap she’d threatened is becoming perilously close to tugging on Mapp’s metaphorical pigtails. 

Georgie - dear Georgie, so devoted! And so terrified that at any moment Lucia might decide that their friendship isn’t so platonic after all! - has so far failed to notice. Of course, he’s far too taken with Quaint Irene and the joy of having another invert to play with to notice that his widowed best friend of many years' standing likes her bread buttered on both sides. And Irene is lovely, but she’s hardly a challenge. All Lucia would need to do is snap her fingers and the girl would be on her knees, ready to do her bidding. The idea has merit, of course, especially on those nights when Mapp has her riled and wanting. But this isn’t Bloomsbury, one can’t just take up with the local androgyne and expect society not to raise an eyebrow. Mapp would have a field day if any hint of Sapphistry came to light and even Georgie would tut, as though his little trips to ‘visit his sisters’ weren’t as transparent as glass. He ought to just call it ‘Bunburying’ and have done with it.

And anyway Lucia has acolytes, a whole village full of them. She could probably talk that little mouse of a vicar’s wife into bed with her if she put her mind to it. No, what she wants is someone who can put up a fight. Oh, nothing ghastly of course! But a tussle between the sheets might be pleasant, fighting for dominance in the bedroom the way they do in the drawing room, polite pretense stripped away along with their clothes. Lose that dreadful hat, muss up her hair, make her struggle to regain the upper hand in the only place Lucia will ever let her. 

For whilst she may want to see Mapp squashed thoroughly in the eyes of Tilling society - but not too thoroughly, nothing she can’t come back and challenge her from - Lucia isn’t entirely averse to letting her take the lead under certain, very specific, circumstances. 

And it’s these circumstances that have her sending a note to Susan Wyse and taking to her bed in the middle of the afternoon, claiming a headache. 

Curtains closed, she removes every stitch and climbs into bed, revelling being _déshabillé_ \- what is the Italian for that? She must hunt out her phrasebook - against Mapp’s best bed sheets. How often has the other woman lain like this, Lucia wonders? Not often enough by her estimation - what that woman needs, along with being brought down a peg or two, is a bloody good fuck. The thought makes her moan aloud, her hand pressing between her legs as she drags the very two fingers she’d shove inside Mapp through damp curls. 

Images flash through her mind - being held down as Mapp straddles her, nails digging into her arms, lips being bitten as often as they’re kissed. Her rival pushing her back onto the bed, maybe even tying her wrists to the headboard with those ridiculous faux-Bohemian beads that always draw Lucia’s eyes to Mapp’s not inconsiderable bosom. Her fingers would be clumsy and bruising, the vindication glinting in her eyes as she discovered Lucia’s true nature. 

Her fingers twist and push inside, her thumb rubbing rhythmically in the exact place she's imagined Mapp's sharp tongue. She feels shivery and alive in a way she never did with Philip, and a little traitorous too because her marriage was never just another rung on the social ladder, no matter what the rumours said. And maybe she doesn't want to be alone, maybe this war with Elizabeth Mapp is the closest kind of companionship a widow with her particular romantic interests can find. 

The thought, then, that this doesn't have to be a holiday, that she can leave Riseholme and all its memories behind and set up camp in Tilling as a thorn in Mapp's curvaceous side makes her ache with happiness. True, it's a rather malicious happiness, but it's the thought of someone seeing her for what she truly is that thrills her. 

Mapp, confronted with Lucia in all her petty, affected glory, and unable to do a damn thing about it.

Mapp, who would get her revenge in a thousand small ways until their worlds have narrowed to just the two of them, one besting and the other being bested, defeat just as sweet as victory if it comes in the right way and at the right hands.

Mapp's hands, pinching and twisting and tormenting and ultimately merciful as she finally lets Lucia come...

And come she does, with a muffled scream and her rival's name on her lips, so overwhelmed by her climax and the vision that prompted it, that it almost seems that Mapp is in the room with her, the sickly sweet gardenia scent she wears lingering in the air. 

Somewhere in the distance, a front door slams.

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be a lot smuttier than it is, but it turns out that Lucia has a lot of feelings behind that flippant facade.


End file.
